Now on its seventh year, the Compassionate Friends of Saipan continues to provide hope, comfort, and understanding to grieving families who have lost a loved one<\/p>\n
Jill Derickson, founder of the Compassionate Friends chapter on Saipan, said that they are an organization that supports grieving families that go through a difficult time. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to think that we provide hope to people who are 10, 20 years down the road\u2026It is truly horrible and difficult when you lose a family member,\u201d she said. \u201cAt Compassionate Friends, we say it\u2019s not always going to be this painful and this bad. We think of it as a wound that is healing. You are never going to get over it, you are always going to have a scar but you will be able to learn to live with it.\u201d <\/p>\n
According to Derickson, Compassionate Friends of Saipan is a worldwide organization.<\/p>\n
\u201cCompassionate Friends of Saipan became the official chapter of the Compassionate Friends national about a year after we held our first candle-lighting in December 2012 and we started holding grief support meetings once a month,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe stories and experiences of people who come to our meetings are private and confidential. People are welcome and not forced to talk. It truly helps to know that a grieving family member is able to talk and even just listen to others who have been through it because that helps in the healing process,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The 6th Annual Candle Lighting Remembrance Program was held last Dec. 10 and 100 candles were lit by family members to honor the memories of their loved ones.<\/p>\n
\u201cAside from lighting candles, we prepare a slide show, which is the touching part of the event,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The Compassionate Friend of Saipan meets every first Thursday of the month.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of pain out there and this support group helps them. It\u2019s not going to fix the situation but people can feel less alone. We emphasize that one need not walk alone,\u201d Derickson said.<\/p>\n
The Compassionate Friends of Saipan can be reached through Derickson at (670) 989-9821 and Donna Krum at (670) 783-1900.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Now on its seventh year, the Compassionate Friends of Saipan continues to provide hope, comfort,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8421,2473,2474,67],"class_list":["post-269013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-compassionate-friends","tag-donna-krum","tag-jill-derickson","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}